Paul Grice and the philosophy of language

548 STEPHEN NEALE
U to intend A to recognize the intention specified in the first clause
(however stated).
But what of clause (3) Grice wants this in order to filter out cases in
which some natural feature of the utterance in question makes it completely
obvious that p. He is worried by cases like the following: (a) Herod
presents Salome with the head of John the Baptist on a charger (p. 109,
p. 218); (b) in response to an invitation to play squash, Bill displays his
bandaged leg (p. 109). According to Grice, we do not want to say that
Herod meant that John the Baptist was dead; nor do we want to say that
Bill meant that his leg was bandaged (though we might want to say that
he meant that he could not play squash, or even that he had a bad leg).
Along with several others, I am not at all sure about Grice's intuitions
here. 56 He seems to be worried that in cases like (a) and (b) there is
something approximating natural meaning that interferes with the idea of
Herod and Bill nonnaturally meaning that John the Baptist is dead and
that Bill has a bandaged leg, respectively. In view of the links Grice
attempts to forge between natural and nonnatural meaning in 'Meaning
Revisited', it is not clear to me why the putative presence of natural
meaning is supposed to be problematic, and so it is not clear to me why
the third clause of (II) is needed. Grice himself brings up cases that seem
to create a problem for the third clause (pp. 109-110). 57 Suppose the
answer to a certain question is "on the tip of A's tongue". U knows this;
that is, U knows that A thinks that p but can't quite remember. So U
reminds A that p by doing something by which he (U) means that p. In
such a scenario, even if U has the intention specified in the first clause
(however stated), it does not seem to be the case that U has the intention
specified in the the third clause. It is noteworthy that the examples Grice
uses to justify the third clause involve nonlinguistic utterances (the "John
the Baptist" and "bandaged leg" cases). However, it is possible to construct
cases involving properly linguistic utterances in which the fact that
p is made just as obvious by the utterance as in Grice's nonlinguistic cases.
Consider an utterance by me of (e.g.) 'I can speak in a squeaky voice'
said in a squeaky voice; 58 or an utterance by me of 'I'm right here' yelled
in the direction of someone known to be looking for me. 59 In neither of
these cases is there a strong inclination to say that I did not mean what I
said.
A serious problem seems to await Grice further down the road if he
56 On this matter, see Schiffer (1972), R6canati (1986), and Sperber and Wilson (1986).
57 See also Searle (1969) and Schiffer (1972).
58 This example is due to Neil Smith.
59 Schiller (1972); R6canati (1986).